‘Yes, I was a racist… and I’m mentally ill’: Shanley Kane in shocking social media meltdown

Disgraced feminist agitator Shanley Kane last night admitted that she had used racist language while dating a notorious white supremacist and convicted hacker, as we reported Saturday. Kane claims that the racial epithets she used were “satire” and that her behaviour should be excused because she is “mentally ill.”

Then, in an explosive blog post, Amelia Greenhall, Kane’s cofounder at feminist blog Model View Culture, confessed what it had been like working with Kane for the few months of operation before Kane forced her out of a company that had been her own idea.

Greenhall says Kane confessed her “racist past” and told Greenhall about her relationship with Andrew Auernheimer, otherwise known as weev, when they were still on speaking terms. “What concerned me about these revelations was not that Shanley has had a relationship with weev where she participated in making racist jokes,” wrote Greenhall, “but that she did that so recently before starting a publication focused on diversity.

“Had I known about these things before we were well into running the company, I doubt I would have chosen her as a co-founder. As it was, at the end of our 6+ months of working together, I came away unsure if she had actually fundamentally changed from that past or not.”

“I left Model View Culture because working with Shanley felt like I was in an abusive relationship,” said Greenhall. “Each day I dreaded having to interact with her. Eventually I was able to see many of the things I was experiencing – such as yelling, excuses that the yelling was just because she needed me so much, her demands that I isolate myself from my friends – as classic abuser tactics. I woke up one morning with the bone-deep realization that I could no longer work with her.”

Greenhall says Kane scrubbed her from history when she left the company: “Shanley has since erased me from Model View Culture’s history. Fighting erasure of work is a feminist issue, and also one that Shanley is aware of and has specifically addressed in the past. Yet the publication did not announce that I had left, and quietly took me off the about page, though it has continued to refer to itself as ‘we.’

“Shanley credits herself as ‘founder’ not ‘co-founder.’ In telling the story of founding the company in press, she does not mention that I was there unless specifically asked about it … [Kane was] emotionally and verbally abusive … I felt abused to the point where I left a company that I loved and had been my dream.”

Kane has hounded men and even other women out of the public square, silencing them with her protracted bullying campaigns, which she justifies with harrowing personal stories about her life in the technology industry. Yet those personal stories sometimes do not bear critical scrutiny.

On 11 August last year, Kane tweeted that she had given up “decades of work” to become a professional feminist critic. Then, on 18 January, in response to our reporting, she wrote that she: “didn’t understand the abuse dynamics in my own relationships, i was only starting to open my eyes to tech’s shit. i was in my 2nd tech job.”

Kane’s critics have been asking: given that she is 28 years old, how could she have given up “decades” of work to found Model View Culture? Did she start work at the age of eight? Discrepancies in her account of her own life leave sceptical readers wanting more evidence for some of Kane’s claims.

Kane alleged on Twitter that our report on Saturday, which took the form of an interview with Auernheimer, is based on the testimony of a “scumbag” and “abusive piece of shit” who is “bitter” over the ending of their relationship. “The part of the story left out of course,” she adds, “is how I dumped his ass and he cried like a fucking baby for a month. You would too.”

She says Andrew Auernheimer is a “serial harasser” and “domestic abuser… primarily known for abusing and terrorizing women and lying to the press.” She adds that he was “abusive loser who manipulated me, blackmailed me, lied to me and continues to abuse me.”

These are serious charges. Yet why, if Auernheimer was abusive and Kane had ended the relationship, as she claims, did she later fly to New York City on the eve of his sentencing to see him again? Why, if Auernheimer manipulated her, blackmailed her, lied to her and abused her, as she claims, did she send him texts the eve of his sentencing asking if he wanted to have dinner with her, or go to the opera? (Auernheimer declined the invitation, he says.)

Why, if Auernheimer was an “abusive piece of shit,” as she claims, did she send approximately $500 to his prison commissary during his jail sentence, well after the relationship had ended and she was free of him?

Despite multiple opportunities, Kane has refused to address these inconsistencies, or indeed any others, in her account, leaving many to conclude that much of what she claims is simply a fabrication, designed to elicit sympathy, garner support for her extreme views and, of course, merely as a pretext for her own abusive behaviour.

The sincerity of Kane’s feminism is very much in doubt. Elizabeth Spiers, a veteran journalist and former editor of the New York Observer, was attacked by Kane with these words: “Get the fuck over me and move on with your life as a has-been. You are literally 10 years older than me, yet are relentlessly picking on a young woman with an up-and-coming media career like you once had. You look jealous and petty, and your ongoing obsession with me is creepy as fuck.”

Asserting that a middle-aged woman is washed up and jealous of youth betrays the most rudimentary ideals of feminism, as one Kane-watcher put it to me last night–not to mention the fact that it has been Kane who has obsessively tweeted about Spiers, and not the other way around. Spiers is 38.

Now it has been revealed that not only did Kane date a white supremacist – and, by her own admission and according to her Model View Culture cofounder, share his views – but that her approach to the truth has been casual at best in regards to her own biography and that she has been just as abusive, if not more so, to other women as the men she spends all day complaining about on social media.

One Silicon Valley business writer, speaking anonymously to Breitbart, said last night: “When she first came on the scene, [Kane] was really cool – young and energetic and friendly with only the odd ill-timed rant. Over time however she frankly became crazy and the power that a small but vocal group of ultra-militant people gave her made her ever more aggressive. Regular expletive-laden twitter rants, comments that anyone who is male and in tech is a rapist and accusations left, right and center about underhanded deeds all added up to an explosive combination.

“To be honest I think she does more damage than good for her cause – while she certainly gets page views, she makes people in tech scared to have open and honest discussions about diversity, fearful because they risk being eviscerated by Shanley.”

Last night, Tim Chevalier, a long-time supporter of Kane’s, said in a blog post on his personal website: “I believe Amelia and I support her unequivocally in her decision to tell her story. We can be a stronger community if Shanley chooses to take responsibility for her actions towards Amelia … of course, whether her apology is adequate is up to Amelia to decide.”

“The level of hypocrisy,” a female marketing executive based in San Francisco wrote in response to our earlier reporting, “is simply staggering. At last now it’s all coming out. Especially the race stuff, that really shocked me.”

“We’re learning how many fucks feminists really have for ‘intersectionality’ and bell hooks,” a senior Silicon Valley chief executive told Breitbart this morning, on condition of anonymity since he fears reprisals from Kane. “Third-wave feminists care about their ideology and their in-group. They’re defending someone who wittingly made racist remarks – in 2012. They don’t care about black people at all.”

“Whether black entrepreneurs and tech workers, some of whom have previously supported Kane’s recent lip service to people of color, will be next to speak out is anyone’s guess,” another prominent Valley figure, a journalist who has been following Kane’s career, said last night. “But I hope they do.”

“Shanley running Model View Media is like having David Duke’s ex-gf run Essence magazine,” tweeted one black observer yesterday.

In a long, rambling self-justification posted earlier this week in response to our reporting, Kane claimed to be “mentally ill,” suffering from “anxiety disorder” and “obsessive-compulsive disorder.” Some of her first sexual experiences, she says, “included being molested and a victim of statutory rape.”

“As a working professional I’ve been sexually harassed, verbally and physically intimidated by managers, underpaid, overworked, denied promotions, humiliated, and subjected to hostile work environment after hostile work environment,” she continued. “I’ve been threatened with revenge porn by multiple exes, and coerced into doing things I think are unethical by people in positions of power over me. I’ve had hacked nude photos sent to my bosses and investors.

“I’ve been stalked over the course of months and years, been slandered and abused by media, and disowned by my industry for being a woman who spoke up. I am one of the most visible women in tech – not as a respected and valued member of our industry, but as a target. I live in constant fear of the tech community and am terrorized on a regular basis.”

But the number of people willing to listen to Kane’s fanciful stories is dwindling. Last night Kane’s support appeared to be drying up rapidly, her reputation as a hero of progressivism shattered and her track record as a champion of the underprivileged severely damaged. Though she may continue to make noise on Twitter, any ability to effect change for women and minorities in the technology industry is likely a thing of the past.

There is “room [to] support diversity in tech and the work Model View Culture has done, but you are allowed to have doubts about Shanley’s sincerity or track record of abusive behavior,” wrote Greenhall yesterday, to which another of our sources added: “It’s a pity. Some of what she publishes is worthwhile and necessary. But she has become too toxic to do any good in the tech industry any longer.”